


The Cat and the Fiddle...

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fruedian Slips, Gen, M/M, Other, The Cat is Out of the Bag, foot in mouth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 17:54:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5636344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So the other day I'm reviewing "The Sign of Three," and My Editorial Brain cuts in and notices something. A lovely, excellent bit of verbal ambiguity. Looked at one way it means one thing. Looked at another and, well...</p><p>This is pure fluff, with very little going on beyond a face-off between a profoundly irked Lestrade and a largely clueless Sherlock. The "Cat" in the title is out of the bag, and the Fiddle will be self-explanatory. It's honestly nothing but fun; however, I hope it's fun you end up enjoying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cat and the Fiddle...

“All I can say is you’re bloody-damned lucky there was a murder attempt,” Lestrade growled at Sherlock the day after John’s wedding.

“I know,” Sherlock grinned, entirely clueless as to Lestrade’s meaning—too busy enjoying the up-side of the “evening do.” “I mean, it could have been better—I could have quite enjoyed a bit more gore and a bit more actual mystery. But it did wind up a case that had perplexed me for some time, and it saw John and Mary off with a bang.”

“They sent me home with your fiddle. I considered pawning it.”

“It’s a Stradavarius!”

“Hell it is. Really nice modern custom-made fake, but not a Strad.”

“How can you be so sure?” Sherlock huffed.

“I know what the insurance on that sort of thing costs.”

Sherlock shrugged. “I could let Mycroft pay.”

“You do let Mycroft pay—but not Strad levels. And by the way, he says he won’t keep on paying if you go walking away without it again.”

Sherlock pouted. “It was an emotional event. My mind was on other things.”

“No shit, Sherlock. I considered killing you myself—think how nice that would have been. Blood. Gore. John and Mary get a good send-off…”

Sherlock sniffed. “You’re just jealous, Gandalf. I solved it and you could barely be brought to secure the building.”

“Damn right. Not bad enough you’re playing silly-bastards in the middle of the evening-do, but you outed us. Without even a second thought.”

“What do you mean?” Sherlock straightened and scowled at Lestrade. “Outed you?”

“Me? Your brother? Opened your big yap and dropped the whole thing right out there in the middle of the evening-do? Like I said, you’re bloody-damned lucky there was a murder attempt. Otherwise I was going to take you down myself.”

“Mycroft would have been furious.”

“He is furious.”

Sherlock blinked. It was obvious to Lestrade he was completely unaware. Which was the problem, of course. How could anyone keep a secret if Sherlock was going to go drop it right in the middle of a public event, because he was doing that high-speed cogitation thing…and not even realize he’d muffed it?

“You really don’t know, do you?”

Sherlock sniffed. “I’m sure if it were important I would.” The furious, fulminating glare he got back from Lestrade slowed him down—finally. After some silence, he said, warily, “Very well, Gilbert. What did I do?” 

Lestrade considered. “You do remember commenting that most people are easy to kill, right?”

“Of course I remember. It’s really a truism. People are soft targets—constantly offering both reason and opportunity to improve the gene pool by culling the herd. Some people seem practically born to be murdered.”

“Reminds me of someone I know, yeah…” Lestrade gulped coffee with a ferocity that suggested he was downing rocket fuel or perhaps just high-octane ichor. “So. You remember that, right? And you remember commenting that John was easy?”

Sherlock blushed. “Granted, that probably wasn’t polite at his own wedding,” he conceded. “But I was thinking…”

“Yeah? Really?”

“Perhaps more about the murderer than the wedding…”

“I’ll say. And do you remember telling all his guests how you’d do it—the method?”

“Poison.” Sherlock sounded somewhere between smug and salacious. “He really is quite easy…”

“I doubt it. He’s survived you.”

“Rude, Grimoire. That’s just rude.”

“No. It’s not. It’s quite restrained. And do you remember what came next?”

Sherlock paused, and frowned, then looked up in exasperation. “Well of course you’d be an easy mark. Are you, a copper, a DI, so stupid as to not realize how simple you’d be to take out?”

“You didn’t have to tell them how,” Greg snapped. “Or where.”

Sherlock paused, frowning, clearly summoning words up from the dark abyss of his Mind Palace. After a moment he said, “Oh, that!” Then, finally, as the penny dropped. “Oh. That.”

“Yeah. ‘I’ve got a pair of keys to my brother’s house – I could easily break in there andasphyxiate him.’”

“You weren’t there,” Sherlock snapped. “You were securing the building.”

“I was right outside the door calling Sally for backup,” Lestrade snarled. “Having sent the security staff to manage the exits. I heard every word.”

Sherlock hunched. “They probably thought I meant that was how I’d kill Mycroft,” he said.

“Probably. Do I care? Not. Because next time you blab it may not disappear in a puff of you dynamiting a wedding and people being a bit preoccupied.”

Sherlock tried to rally, raising his nose in the air and sniffing, for all the world like his older brother. “Really, Gorky,” he drawled in savage false sympathy, “You can’t honestly imagine anyone cares who you’re sleeping with? Or where?”

Lestrade stared him down, dark brown eyes burning…burning. “Your fiddle,” he said. “I have it.”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “This is entirely uncalled for.”

“You told over a hundred people I sleep at your brother’s house.”

“It doesn’t count if they don’t understand it.”

“Fiddle, Sherlock. Bonfire. Fiddle-bonfire. Fiddle-bonfire. Which is it going to be?”

Sherlock glowered—and glowered—and at last slumped. “All right. What do you want me to do?”

“Forget where Mycroft and I sleep. Entirely.”

“That’s not entirely reasonable…”

“I believe you’ve mentioned deleting? Well—delete, Sherlock.”

Sherlock sighed. “But…”

“Delete.”

Sherlock closed his eyes. “It won’t be gone if I think about it—you do know that?”

“I daresay if nothing else you’ll be reminded quite often…considering how you found out the first time.”

“A vision that will traumatize me forever…You. My brother. A certain lack of sheets…”

“See—you can delete that, too, now. Not that I don’t expect you to break in and ruin an otherwise great evening soon enough… But you’re going to bury it down deep enough you won’t blab it in the middle of a murder case again. Squawk like that in front of Sally and it won’t go unnoticed.”

Sherlock, resigned, nodded. “And I can have my violin back when?”

“I’ll have it sent around to Baker Street tonight. God forbid you lack the proper tools to mope with.”

“Very well. Consider the fact deleted.”

Lestrade smiled, grimly. “Good. Now—toddle off, brat. I’ve got work to do.”

And Sherlock did. But not before adding a note to his mind palace suggesting that it was, in the end, not worth the fun of outing his brother and his friend if Lestrade was going to be such a humorless dolt about the entire thing.

Love. He sighed, heavily, thinking of Mary and John; of Mycroft and Lestrade. A pity, really—all of them demented. A shame—too bad they couldn’t be like that nice girl Janine. No doubt she’d be sane and sensible if a man got entangled with her…wouldn’t she?

And for no reason he could name he spent the rest of the afternoon considering how USEFUL it might be to call her and ask her out…


End file.
